Hyundai i20 WRC

Lindholm was also involved with Peugeot WRC cars

Pykälistö was Citroen C4 gravel testdriver.

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Originally Posted by darkstar

yeah, i know. but he had a great aggressive driving style. i still have nice memorys from rallye germany 2007 with the xsara. that was awesome.

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I miss Duval aswel. Like Skarderud says maybe he wasnt the easiest to be around, but hes still better than the PR robots we have today!

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Originally Posted by darkstar

yes hopefully! the sx4 was really crap. but when you take a look back, suzuki had lindholm as a testdriver. shurely a great driver in national championchip but to get on top in wrc you need someone else. for asphalt testing they could get duval as a test driver(noone was faster then him on asphalt, you can tell what you want!), damn i still would love to have him a comeback :) a great testdriver also could be grönholm.

for the driver lineup my first choice would be sordo. he is shurely also a very good testdriver. and i still think that andersson and atkinson are very good drivers, they could have a chance in my opinion. also hänninen is very good, even on apshalt, but still sticks with skoda. so is mikkelsen, he could be a very good choice. also linked to vw and skoda yet, but who knows. he is still very, very young (only 23 years old, sounds weired to me, because he´s around for so long already, i took notice of him in 2007 first time). östberg also started to convince me this season i must say. and i still think that tänak has a bright future and so is neuville(but he shurely will stick to citroen/psa).

but there are so much other names around at the moment who do a good job. breen, arzeno, abbring, paddon...

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Don't underestimate Lindholm as a development driver or overestimate fast competition drivers as developers. The fastest driver can suck in development. To really develop a fast rally car from the scratch the most important people are managers and engineers, not the drivers. Engineers need feedback from the drivers. The skills that are ideal for development drivers are usually the ability to drive constantly with same style (and to alter that style if told so). Good development driver has an ability to "not adapt" to a car if he does not want to give engineers more clear view on actual changes. Especially in the early phase of development program max speed means very little.

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Originally Posted by Allyc85

Henning Solberg? Are you guys serious? Move on, he was never that great in the WRC at his peak!

I would have someone like Ostberg with an up and coming SWRC charger in the second seat.

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Many feel that Henning never got the break he paid for in WRC. To many times the car stopped due to a part that broke, or settings that never was put correctly on the car from M-Sport.
Anyway, there are two types of good testdrivers, equally fast but;
1: know nothing about the tech aspects of a car but feels the changes and are able to communicate those to the engineers.
2. very technical and speaks the tech language, and comes with ideas for further development.

Not many around in any of these categories, but the engineers need to decide on what type they work best with.

Kris Meeke can do both of those things you mention above. He did heaps of work on the Citroen C4, DS3 and Peugeot 207 s2000 cars. We all know how good those cars turned out. Also he did some work on the last Subaru's Prodrive developed.

Maybe best not to mention the Subaru one - blots an otherwise good record ;)

Great to see new car in WRC, they need some decent driver though. Car without a driver wont drive it self.

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Originally Posted by darkos

Great to see new car in WRC, they need some decent driver though. Car without a driver wont drive it self.

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Plenty out there..

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I hope people accept Hyundai as a rally brand, as Skoda eventually was, even if it does not do well initially.